Understanding Factors Affecting the Use of Urban Parks Through the Lens of Ecosystem Services and Blue–Green Infrastructure: The Case of Gorky Park, Moscow, Russia

Diana Dushkova (), Mina Taherkhani, Anastasia Konstantinova, Viacheslav I. Vasenev and Elvira A. Dovletyarova
Additional contact information
Diana Dushkova: Department of Conservation Biology and Social-Ecological Systems, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Permoser Str. 18, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
Mina Taherkhani: Agrarian and Technological Institute, Peoples Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), Miklukho-Maklaya Str. 6, 117198 Moscow, Russia
Anastasia Konstantinova: Agrarian and Technological Institute, Peoples Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), Miklukho-Maklaya Str. 6, 117198 Moscow, Russia
Viacheslav I. Vasenev: Soil Geography and Landscape Group, Wageningen University, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands
Elvira A. Dovletyarova: Agrarian and Technological Institute, Peoples Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), Miklukho-Maklaya Str. 6, 117198 Moscow, Russia

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-28

Abstract: As a core and long-established part of urban blue–green infrastructure (BGI), public parks play a significant role in the sustainable development of cities. In particular, they make a major contribution to maintaining healthy ecosystems and providing multiple benefits that support human health and quality of life as a kind of nature-based solution (NBS). Still, planning, design, and management of public parks mostly rely on official standards and technical guidelines, whereas societal perspectives and the use of the ecosystem services (ES) approach (and cultural ecosystem services (CES) in particular) remain inadequately integrated. By assessing CES offered by Gorky Park in Moscow (Russia), the paper aims to bridge this gap and investigate the flow of CES and its relation to park infrastructure and the visitors’ needs. For this purpose, non-participant observation, field notes, and photographs were used in different functional park zones. By investigating visitor activities and factors affecting them, a variety of CES provided by the park have been detected. As aligned with its original idea, the park was mostly used for recreation, leisure, sports, and socializing. Moreover, the CES related to aesthetic, educational, and cultural heritage values were also partially utilized. The park was mostly attractive to the younger generation (the highest number of visitors), whereas visitors over 60 years old were hardly represented. Notably, men were more interested in sports (especially, team sports), whereas women mostly preferred walking (alone, with family, and with friends), relaxation, playing and spending time with children, picnicking, etc., which indicated certain preferences for CES among the park visitors. An interdependent relationship between the CES supply and the park infrastructure was found: the more infrastructural components were identified, the greater variety of park activities and corresponding CES were detected at certain observation points, which could ultimately lead to overcrowding and overutilization of the ES capacity. Given that the Moscow government claims integrating ES into the planning and management of urban BGI as one of the priorities in the city’s environmental policies, the related recommendations are provided. They address the recent challenges of creating integrated BGI, increasing demand for multifunctionality, and the conflicting interests of different visitor groups to maximize the benefits and diversity of CES delivered by the park.

Keywords: park use; visitors’ activities; sustainable urban planning; green space; observation; blue–green infrastructure (BGI); Moscow (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/2/237/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/2/237/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:14:y:2025:i:2:p:237-:d:1574375

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().